My local club, the Rugby outlanders, has a great membership and I am happy to be part of it. A great gaming club is hard to find, but also hard to maintain. Membership changes, attitudes creep in and the games change. Locally we all work hard to maintain this club and the efforts of the organisers really pay off.

As several club members have birthdays in May and June we are having a club outing to warhammer world, Nottingham. The day will be in 2 parts, a visit to new halls and a game on the imperial city board. (All booked !)

The game has been organised by me and lee Bedford (@ratinabun on Twitter), and is a format we call ‘skirmishhammer’ the rules are a stripped down version of the old 40k in 40 mins, designed to be fun, while constraining the options. This stops power play and levels the armies. Here are the rules.

-1 force each, no allies, formations (unless unavoidable) 1000pts

-armies can be unbound, but only to be fluffy

-no named characters

-no vehicles (anything with an AV score) or monsterous creatures, bikes or fliers

-no fortifications

-game is play to kill points. I kp for wiping out a unit, 2 for firstblood, 2 for slay a warlord, (3 for a team captain)

-5 players per team with a captain each (lee and I) team are chosen randomly.

-turns are timed!

As you can this starts to limit options, but also allows for the units you don’t normally get to see make an appearance. We have played this game a few times and it’s fast and fun. With 5k per side, all infantry, it will be an epic clash. I know several players are feverishly painting new units or brining new life to older units!

For me my ultramarines are going mob handed and I have. Added a new 10 man squad to add a fresh tint to the force. I have nice fluff based list and it’s going to be fun force to use.

Look out on Twitter for updates, I will be tweeting live from the game on the @outlandersGC feed on the 7th June from around 2.

I really am an addict!. i have tried to avoid GW for 2 months and its not working for me.

Lets start off I with what (still) hate.

-The Current release rate is getting worse. its only 2 months since i started to ween my self of the product, and we have 3 new codex and the rumor mill is pointing at my beloved Space marines!

-The stupid of the rules. this needs no explanation. They are just getting daft and I can’t see how they will fix this one. there are some awful codex out now and it will take a while to change them.

-The endless production machine. the rate of new books, New forgeworld, new Novella, new Games, new everything. its hard to focus. you start to feel like a cash cow being milked.

But despite this, I still love the product. I get real pleasure painting my marines. They are really nice, the product is great, the plastic kits are stunning and the range is phenomenal. I know the what most of things are and this helps me to paint.

So how do get past this? well, I have decide that I am not going to give them up cold turkey, but I am rethinking my hobby. I have loved the new games that I have tried and I am breaking the monopoly on my hobby time/cash. here is my new plan.

-only buy what I want to paint. not competitive collecting.

-No Competitive games, just for fun.

-No allies, just focus on 1 army.

-try to find my enjoyment in the hobby again.

I have found that the Prodos games stuff is stunning and I have started to get some batman stuff, but the 2 big GW releases for me are the new FW stuff and the command tanks. I really don’t think I can resist them!

My name is Paul and I am an addict. My drug of choice is grey plastic/resin and I have been addicted to this for over 25 years. The money spent over the years is ridiculous. The last 5 or 6 years it has even dominated my Christmas presents. No one asks what I want for Christmas any more. I just get GW vouchers and the long suffering wife, Jo, get me a big forgeworld kit. Life has been good, but I need to change.

It’s easy to say it’s me and not you when you end a relationship, but this time, that’s a lie. I know what has gone wrong in the relation ship and it my addiction that has hidden the flaws from me. Now, I could go into a long tirade about an abusive relationship or a dominate market place. But I am going to take a different approach. My issue has been to blindly follow games workshop for years now, just hope it will get better. But it’s not, if anything, it’s getting a lot worse and the dizzying changes is too much for me now. For years now, the logical and cinematic nature of wargaming has been lost behind poorly conceived, easily abused and down right daft ideas. For me i think the true start of the slope was the release of the imperial Knights. Since that point the game has slowly started to die for me. Don’t get me wrong, I love the imperial Knights kit, it’s awesome, but they have come to prove the mentality of GW. Each new release has pushed the envelope a bit more, then a bit more, then a bit more. To the point now that you create mind boggling death stars that alpha strike you off the table. Seeing baneblades killed by single unit in a turn is now almost normal. This is a total disjoint to the fluff. The humble terminator, in the best armour in the in the galaxy is easier to kill that an eldar jetbike. The abuse of the 2+ reroll is now endemic. The longer it goes, the more the rules abuse creeps in. Now I am not complaining at gamers. It’s not them. It’s the writers that are abusing the rules.

Case in point-haywire. Until recently, haywire was really rare and only HQ could shoot it. Now units are blasting it off at upto 6 shoots a turn, not elites, basic troops. The mighty land raider is now wrapped in useless armour. A tau transport has better survaviblity than a baneblade.

It’s creep like this that annoyed me and why I want to change. I want to play wargames. I like to recreate battles and I want my heroes to to fight tooth and nail for the objective. I don’t want the outcome predetermined when the list was written. I must say however, I love the back ground. The fluff from GW is great and I will be left struggling without this deep understanding of the universe of my wargaming. This will be hard for me, and I know learning a new history will be very difficult for me.

Rather than just complain, I think it’s better to just go sort it, so I have made a decisicion that a lot of gamers have made recently. I am leaving my love of games workshop to one side and leaving my comfort zone. I am gonna take this opportunity to find out what’s out their. I have never spent to much time on other games and I have never really appreciated the scope of the smaller companies. I am also going to take the opportunity to change my painting style. My ultramarines, while nice, tend to be clean. I want to paint a more realistic style, more weathered and aged. This is a new challenge. My current speed of painting is fast. I get a unit done a week, but I think if I slow down, I can make them better. I want to revolutionise my wargaming. For me, this will be hard and like with addicts, I need to go cold turkey.

To this end I have pulled out of my local league, stepped away from my local club and gone hunting. I hope people will enjoy seeing me struggle. I hope to carry on with posting for miniature Monday and any advice is greatly appreciated.

I have a plan and I am setting my self some challenges.

1-no new GW for 6mths (ok, paint is not included)*

2-sell all that stuff that is not used.

3-reinvest the money to learn a new game/s

4-develope a new painting technique every month

*obviusly black library is excluded from this!

I am very fortunate to have great local games store, shadow games, in rugby. They have a treasure trove of games and advice on hand to help me out. Cheers Neil!

My first foray in the wider world is going to be warzone resurrection. It’s not a huge steep for me. The 32mm resign kits are still very grimdark. Each one like a forgeworld model to work on, but it introduces me to gaming with cards. The book and A starter box set is cheaper than a unit of centurions, so cost is good.

I’ll pop up some reviews as I go and I want this to be a positive experience. I want to challenge my self and walk a path less trodden.

So that’s me. A recovering addict. Taking each miniature a day at a time and getting lost outside of my comfort zone. Till then, see you across a newer battlefield.

In a recent game we decide to try out a simple idea. What if you couldn’t take tanks? In fact, not just tanks but no av at all? Played at 1000pts, the game was just infantry. We ended up with ultramarines vs iron hands in a great scrap.

It was very reminiscent of old 40k and you soon realise where all the points go. For me, I took 2×10 tactical squad, 10 devastators, 10 sternguard and 5 vanguaurd. For hq I managed to take a captain and librarian . That’s 47 marines, 6 of which had jump packs. In a 1000pts game, that was huge!

We opted for the maelstrom of war mission and fought out a 5 turn classic of a game. Lots of movement, shooting and a real science of the ebb and flow of a battle. Turn 1 only saw 6 dead and the arrival of reserves saw no deathstars, instant first blood or any shenanigans. 1st blood in fact went to the librarian, with a psych scream.

In the end the ultramarines won, with a solid chunk of survivors, but lots of smaller battles lead to the win. One thing that really stood out, the game was settled in combat. The shooting phase , while still brutal, was not the decider. This was a refreshing change for us and the dominance of the humble foot slogger was awesome.

We are trying again this week, but the ethos of the game will be stretched. I am tempted to suggest no monstersus creatures as it fits the idea well, and

It’s our clubs group stage in the annual league and I get my first group game this week. As I finished in the top 3 I am the ‘seeded’ player in the 3 rd group. The winner of each of the 3 groups and a wild card player all fight in the quarter finals in November. The top 2 get to fight it out for the much converted trophy.

So what can can I expect from this week? My opponent is Ben, a younger spacemarine player. His ecleptic force is challenge to plan for and this can make a coherent plan difficult. It’s also easy to think its easy as he’s young, however as it’s a league match, I can be complacent.

So what my plan? I am sticking with my core, Cato sicarius and 2 tactical squads. My additional force will be my airborne task force. A single raven, armed with assault cannons and a typhoon missile pod. It will carry a full sternguard squad a fed an ironclad dreadnought. This will enable some fire power to kill power armour and any landraider that I know he loves. Added to this is my gun totting fireraptor. The fearsome avenger cannon is the bane of all power armoured forces. I just love it. The 2 twin auto cannons will deal with his beloved land speeders.

Finished Fireraptor

The plan is to dissect his force. Eliminating his treats one at a time. I have a range of weapons to meet his varied threats and I have a coherent strategy in my head to eliminate his forces.

We need to talk about cato. Now, don’t get wrong I am a big gw supporter, and try hard to avoid the hate, sometimes I fail. (Insert deamology rant here) but I must say they dropped the ball with the Cato Sicarus model. For those that don’t know, he is captain of the 2nd company and the most likely successor to calgar. He is a dynamic figure, leading from the front, his battle hardened troops would follow him into the eye of terror it’s self if he needed them to. He is always where the fighting is thickest, killing warlords, kicking ass and carving his name into the pages of history. So, what do gw produce for this 41st millennium Acton hero? A sweeping hero with masses of movement? A leaping angle of death? Or The most static, ridged and dull spacemarine ever!

Don’t get me wrong. The sculpt is great, the detailing, the cape, the strange quiff of hair, all done really well, they are just to compact. The model lacks the energy of the fluff. More stoic leader than interglacial action man.

So, what can done? Well here is my attempt to convert this static model into an action pose.

1- the core elements. To make this conversion, I needed a finecaste Cato model. The core elements that I needed are:

Head, sword scabbard, right shoulder guard, ultramar symbol from left shoulder, chest and frontal armour and his back pack. (All harvested from the orginal kit. This is the only time that fine caste is the best!

To this I needed the old plastic commanders torso back (with its cape), running legs (vanguard legs work best) a plasma pistol and relic blade.

I have bought him 2nd hand off eBay (£5.50!) I set to work harvesting the parts I needed. 2 hours of clipping, trimming and shaving later, I had the core parts. Cleaning the back of his loin cloth and guard was hard, but it managed to get it done using my rotary tool. I also used this to hollow out the top neck area so the head would fit and bottom of the body so the legs fitted.

For the arm I have again used vanguard arms with the raised right arm working really well. To mount the legs I had to remove the armour on the back. This was then filled with green stuff. There was a horrible gap around his waist, so I filled this with green, then used various bits to disguise it. Sternguard ammo belt worked well as did the vet icons from the commander. On the right hip the sword scabbard fitted perfectly.

For his base I wanted something to movement. Using the end of Valkyrie missile pod, I designed something he is leaping off, with his movement being off center while he is shooting to left. This makes him more dynamic. To add to this I bent his banner corners back, and tried to bend the edges of cape. For this I used a hair dryer. I got the resin and plastic hot the carefully bent it back.

Painting I have tried to keep the paint as close as possible to the orginal. This will again highlight who it is meant to be. The base looks rusty to help show the glory of Cato in contrast.

I decided to paint up the cape as what I Call a star cape. Which is surprisingly easy to do. I just painted the cape in teh normal fashion for a dark blue cape. Masked off the rest with blue tac. I the took an old tooth brush dipped it into Cremite white. on a spare bit of paper I flicked off the access. I then flicked it on to the cape. I then painted the bigger stars layering thinned Ice white up to Pure white.

So he is done, I want him to his to flow and passion of a hero, I think I got it and now he’s ready to lead the charge!

It has been ages since it have I have blogged and a lot has happened since my last post. I though I would go through what’s still to paint and why.

7th ed The release of the 7th edition of Warhammer 40k has left me looking at my army. I have always thought the army as lacking anti tank. The changes to the vehicle damage table mean that the Lascannon is now a much more valuable weapon. I have added one to tactical squad 6 and the storm raven. I have finally added landraider as well. This gives me the fire-power to kill a tank. I would like to add a stormtalon with las cannons soon as well, but funds prevent this.

New units I have been building more than painting of late. I am not happy with the blue of my recent units as the don’t match the older units. While thinking about this I have add lots to the ‘to be painted’ pile. In total that stack now is rather large.

For me that’s quite a lot. The reclaimed raven was my old Grey knights raven, that never got used. I have stripped it, removed the lighting rig and converted it to the same ‘low profile’ of my other raven. I have chosen to go with an assault cannon turret and the missile launcher. This will make it better vs horde armies.

The 5 man sternguard squad is full converted from bits and is a lot less flashy than my other sternguard squad.the new squad is my anti tank unit. Having 2 melta guns and a few melta combi guns.

The terminator squad is the much vaunted 1st squad, 1st company and so it needed to look right. The squad is converted from deathwing knights and assault terminators. I have added extra bling with Forgeworld shoulder pads.

So that’s the project. It’s a fair old stack and I will try to stay on target. As long as gw don’t go and release something awesome. Till then, see you across the battle table.

New 40k, now with even more flippity floobity psychic pudding shenanigans.

The level of craziness you are likely to see in Warhammer 40k has risen dramatically with the new edition. While I try to remind people that competitive play isn’t the only way to play the game, and playing in the basement with your buddies can still result in perfectly enjoyable and (mostly) balanced games, that just doesn’t quite cut it anymore.

They say that to do injustice is, by nature, good; to suffer injustice, evil; but that the evil is greater than the good. And so when men have both done and suffered injustice and have had experience of both, not being able to avoid the one and obtain the other, they think that they had better agree among themselves to have neither… This they affirm to be the origin and nature of justice; it is a mean or…

So for the 25th badge I thought it needed to be something special, but first if you want to see the others then follow the link. (Blue Miniatures Badge)

So who wins the big one which is a nice milestone? Well first I have been holding on for this one, as the man is a great painter. Plus I think I have made him wait long enough now to release his badge 😀 Well done Rich, it was too easier to give you the first one 😉

An awesome but simple job executed well, make sure you check out his blog LINK, that he is going to update more often now..

Ozrax

I am an old Warhammer 40,000 warhorse. I have been painting and gaming since 1989 and this blog is about my adventures with a Paint Brush. I love my hobby and am always Pro hobby. I am the Cheerleader for the Miniature Monday on Twitter.